Olives, Lemons & Za'atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking

I've been going Tanoreen for years and the food is so goo and is literally the best homemade Middle eastern food. If you are ever in NYC, I highly recommend that you dine at Tanoreen at least once. I was super excited when Chef Rawia released this cook book. The photos are stunning and her stories about her family and the foods of the Levant are great introductions to the food and culture of the region. The recipes include some of my favorite dishes from Tanoreen including the Brussels sprouts, chicken getting, and stuffed cabbage. They are easy to follow and Rawia also provides detailed information on the spices and common ingredients that you will need. Most if not all can easily be found at a Middle a Eastern grocery store, Whole Foods, or Amazon.com. So far, I've cooked several recipes from the book and my family and I found them to be delicious. The lentil and butternut squash stew, kale and shallots, fattoush, beef and white bean stews, seasoned garlic sauce, and the lentil soup are delicious. I look forward to diving into the other recipes and you and your family will certainly be satisfied with this cookbook, which is now one of my favorites.

Brilliant, practical recipes that are delicious. For busy people who don't have to the time to cook tedious, elaborate dishes (Otolenghi), these recipes allow you to create much more pragmatic and tasty fare. The book is visually beautiful, offering up intimate stories and authentic pictures of the origins of Rawia BIshara's recipes. It makes those of us from the area want to dive into our ancestral culinary background, and it makes everyone else want to embrace these lovely recipes. I can't help but gravitate to this book, time and time again, when I'm looking for inspiration.

I love this cookbook and have repeatedly turned to it often since receiving it. Easy recipes with regular ingredients and also exposed me to a few new ingredients. This cookbook also reads like a book as it is very rich with the culture and heritage of the middle east. She creates a fusion of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavors. The photography is simply breathtaking. Very nice companion piece to Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty, Plenty More and Jerusalem cookbooks which I adore.

Some really great recipes, some really ok ones, but overall I found the directions not so straightforward (and I think I spotted a few errors as well). Most of the spices used are the same so you can keep re-trying recipes without needing to buy additional ingredients. It's a beautiful book, and I do reference it often but I usually end of following my own procedures / double checking with online recipes.

I bought this book a few months ago and have been using it on a daily basis. Having grown up in palestine before moving to the states, I can attest to the authenticity of these recipes. The book is well illustrated with the author taking you on a personal guided tour through the culture and history of the beautiful land and people. You will feel like family :). I especially appreciated the author bearing in mind that not all ingredients originally used are readily available in the states as they are in the levant and she offers as good of a substitute in that case. I am so happy that a reliable and easy to follow cookbook focusing on palestinian cooking which I have greatly missed.

Ms. Bishara is an outstanding cook, and making wonderful dishes from her cookbook is almost as good as dining at her restaurant. So far I'm made at least a dozen recipes from her book and all were delicious and made even more enjoyable by the stories that Ms. Bishara shares about many of the recipes. Her culinary skills and warmth make this book a joy for anyone who loves Middle Eastern food.

I absolutely love this book. I am vegetarian, and it has a quite a few vegetarian recipes. I have tried some of them and they were delicious. We loved the roasted eggplant salad and the tahini yogurt dressing. The soups were delicious too. I omitted the meat and used vegetable stock in some of the recipes, and they turned out very good. I love the amount of seasoning she uses in her recipes which makes her dishes very flavorful.

I enjoyed learning of the author’s childhood in the Levant. The recipes are diverse. I made one—the Brussels sprouts—with success. However, the directions said to fry them on high. I hesitated, but followed the direction; my house nearly caught fire. I also quartered the given recipe, which called for 4+ pounds of sprouts! I applaud the author for suggesting substitutions, and particularly being considerate for people with gluten issues. It surprised me, however, that this US-published cookbook offered no imperial measurements. Even more perplexing is that there ARE temperatures given for British ovens (?) (gas levels) and Celcius ovens, but not Fahrenheit.

I love this cookbook! It tells a wonderful story and the recipes are authentic and easy to follow. The food is absolutely delicious. Reading it gave me a warm, homey happy feeling. I absolutely recommend buying it!

Best middleastern recipe book ever

I live in Melbourne, Australia which is very multicultural and where there is a vast selection of cooking styles to try. However I was particularly impressed with the recipes in this book and found them practical, down to earth, and easy to use yet full of flavour. It was exactly what I was looking for and the background and personal anecdotes made the recipes come alive, adding colour, context and perspective. I thoroughly recommend this book and thank the author for sharing.

While I grew up with a tradition of cooking which is related to the Middle Eastern ones, I have been hesitant to make food which is characteristic of the region, partially because I don't like aubergines unless the cook really knows their trade, and because I'm accustomed to slightly different spice mixtures in my favorite cuisine, Indo-Persian. I am not a very experienced cook, personally, but through strange circumstances, I have been around a lot of people who are experts and I have eaten at many excellent restaurants, so I feel qualified to offer an assessment. This book is wonderful. I have only made four recipes from it, but in each case, I went to the pan and the pot to check if there were any delicious crumbs left. Instructions are detailed, and many pictures convey and reinforce the sense of happy family cooking, something rare these days. I expect to treasure it. Comparisons have been made with Ottolenghi and with Ghayour, both of whom I like and respect, but there are nuanced differences between them. Ghayour seems to be self-taught, and many of her dishes provide little idiosyncratic touches which are adorable, but there is also a strong sense that she is still evolving and exploring. Ottolenghi is great, but sometimes I sense some traces of Italian and central European cuisines which impart a different flavor, as he is not as rooted within the tradition as Bishara is. With Bishara, there is still a lot of personality, but there is also the bedrock of tradition, with small details about her hometown, Nazareth, and neighboring areas. In other words, I don't see Bishara, Ghayour and Ottolenghi as competitors; rather, it feels that they complement each other. On a slighly different note, amazon.co.uk provided excellent service here. They had run out of stock for this book for a while and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get it in many weeks; somehow, while it was still listed as being out of stock, it was delivered to me, quickly and at a good price. If all of this sounds appealing, make sure you get your own copy while it's available.

Bellissime ricette con foto meravigliose, ottimo prezzo per un libro così prezioso.